Fine Feathers Make Fine Birds: The Iwill P4HT-S, Continued
This makes the Iwill the only candidate on the testing ground to sport two RAID controllers with a full functional range. The board chalks up another notch with its audio outputs by putting out 5.1 sound analog on audio jacks. So, a microphone or line-in can be used at the same time as the 5.1 audio system. There's something interesting to report about the USB 2.0 ports: while there are three external ports, there's another internal port located between PCI slots 1 and 2, allowing the customer to insert the optional FI panel in an available 5.25" bay. Though the board only comes with a 100 MBit network chip (Realtek), this may be a good choice considering the target group. We can't help but criticize the enclosed hardware monitor software for monitoring voltage and speeds: when calling up the menu item "Smart Fan," only "Division by Zero" was displayed, so this item is useless. The benchmark results showed that Iwill delivers only below-average performance. This is not too much of a drawback considering the low price of about 160 dollars and the board's wide range of features. However, if you're more interested in top performance than in anything else, you'd be better off with a different board.
The Iwill's FireWire and USB 2.0 ports.
Silicon Image's Serial ATA controller.
